


Jon is Jon

by DottyDot



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, jonsa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 11:45:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18992011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DottyDot/pseuds/DottyDot
Summary: 8x06 in which Jon is conflicted, but not a shell inhabited by a death loving alien, plus Jonsa which makes everything better.





	Jon is Jon

 

You think of the crypts and the quiet dead, but on the streets of King's Landing the dead still cry out. They're dead, just not yet. There is no saving them now. 

Ygritte burned away. Theon. Lyanna. Lord Commander Mormont. Maester Aemon. But they were dead before they had turned to ash. 

The white walkers were dead before becoming undead.

The people of King's Landing are not so fortunate. Burned flesh, skin turned to ash, blood covers them as they cry out, the unknowing dead. 

"Where is she?"

Tyrion does not answer you. The weight of every life taken silences even his clever tongue. 

"Where is she." You ask again, each word a cut across your tongue.

Cries, the Unsullied execute prisoners. Davos's warning voice. Just your name, the rest unsaid.  _You can save no one if you are dead_.

Her armies roar as she speaks to them in her strange tongue. Her armies are mesmerized by her power. Her dragon fills you with terror. You did not need to understand her words to know what she says: fire and blood. 

You think of Varys, a man turned to ash as you watched, now a meaningless sacrifice. You failed. No kneeling, begging, or vows of servitude had mattered. What did not bow burned, no matter which supplications you offered. 

Tyrion throws down his pin. He says it was the countless lives, but you saw the tears. He had released the Kingslayer, not saved him. Tyrion is the last Lannister.

You find him in his cell, another walking dead man. And he tells you for the first time of the other dead men. The other cities. 

He tells you what this is. The dragon’s liberation from tyranny means death. 

All your life you have known rage, lust for power, greed. Seen them in other men, felt them in yourself. You know the danger. But you have known the hunger for death before. This is a sleeping monster awakening in you. This part of you a something more terrifying than the rest. _You are a dragon_.

Tyrion talks around what he wants you to do, but you know, you knew before he had said anything, you knew what needed to be done. 

One life for the many. But it would be a sin. Your flesh and blood. A past lover. You couldn't kill again. You are tired of killing. It's all you've done since you left home. It was all you did before you returned home. 

You think of Ramsay, and how his blood tasted good and how you wanted to bathe your hands in it. You think of Littlefinger and how you could feel his struggle to live beneath your hand, how you wanted to feel his last breath with your fingers and watch him lose his fight. You wanted death as much as she, you had the bloodlust in yourself. 

"We aren't all doomed by our house words!"

But you know you are. All your life, all you have ever known is death. There is no escaping it. Even when you wore fur on your cloak. Even when you tried your whole life to be a Stark. You had never been a Stark. You never could be. Now you know why you failed. You are a dragon. 

Tyrion talks of duty, of your obligation to the realm, but you stood on the wall, and it only brought you death. You went beyond the wall and nearly died. You fought the dead at Winterfell and stared down a dragon. And all that came of it was going South for more men to die. You killed your own man to prevent him from raping a woman, and it wasn't enough. There is always more killing. No end to the killing. No end to the dead. 

She had promised a better world, but first she burned away the old.  

"Your sisters" he says. 

Arya. She didn't trust your queen but maybe she would listen to you, maybe she would kneel. Sansa would not. She would never kneel again.  _Sansa_. And you, yes, you are a dragon, more a dragon than a wolf. You always have been.

\----

You find someone else, not the conqueror, in the throne room. Her anger is gone, burned away, sloughed off with her enemies. She smiles and speaks as someone you never knew, asking you to be someone you never were, could never be.

She tells you of a perfect world, but she must conquer and destroy to see it. “I know what is good” she says. Conviction, madness, hope, death, they swirl into one. To her, there is no difference.

But you, you know what is good. Shared laughter. Arguing. Standing on battlements with snow falling in red hair. The warmth of the fire and sharing ale. A bastard becoming a king, blue eyes looking on in pride. Words, promises of faith and belief and hope.

_That_ is paradise.

This, what is before you, talking to you, begging you. It is everything you feared made flesh, staring at you with feverish eyes. 

You look at her. You see death. 

You kiss her. You taste death. 

You stab her. You give her death.

You did not save King's Landing, but you saved _her_. 

And then there is a dragon and soldiers and burning and then darkness. You are locked away with yourself, alone, as you always have been. The verdict is more. More loneliness, more isolation, more of the nothing beyond the Wall. 

 ----

They bring you clothes, Stark furs, and you shudder at the thought of wearing them, but when they settle on your shoulders, there is no recrimination. You think of Ned. He saved you, without you knowing, every day his lie saved your bastard life. And now, at last, you have paid him back in full. You did not prevent the dragon from taking her throne with fire and blood, but you saved a life, Ned Stark's daughter. 

A life for a life, there is peace in that. 

You walk down to the ship, and she is there. You do not know what you feel for you have told yourself not to for so very long. 

There are goodbyes, and you think this is the last time you will ever touch a Stark, ever be this close to feeling home in your arms. You look at her one more time, and then you walk away. 

"Jon."

You don't want to turn around, you don't know how you can bear another goodbye. 

"You said 'where will _we_ go.'"

Your furs sway, as if they too can't resist her voice. She's coming to you, not content to let you leave in peace. 

Her hand is on your arm and you're turning back to her before you can stop yourself. 

"You promised me" she says. 

Your head falls. Arya is staring and Bran has the same vaguely pleased look on his face he wore while saying goodbye. 

But Sansa is placing her hands on your cheeks. "You made a promise to me, and you kept it. You took back the North, you gave me Winterfell, you saved me from her."

Your eyes flick to hers, and she looks into yours with the conviction that has always been hers. The conviction you pulled from to strengthen your resolve every time you were so close to failing.

"You kept your promise to protect me, so now I am making a promise to you. I'll send for you. In one or three or five years, maybe in ten, however long it takes, I will bring you home. Wherever  _we_  go. I will make it so."

You weep as you haven't since you were a boy, perhaps not even then. 

"You belong in Winterfell. You belong with me." She pulls you back into her arms, stroking your hair as you try to become a man again. But this is Sansa, and it is she who gives you yourself, as she did at Castle Black, as she did when you returned to Winterfell, as she does every time she looks at you. 

"You're coming home. We will be together again."

And just like that, it is right. You are hers, and she is yours, not yet, not now, but soon. 

\----

You leave to face the snow and ice, and you burn, even when standing on the Wall, even when you leave to resettle the Free Folk. The days and weeks spent traipsing through the snow cannot chill you. Dragon blood rages within you.

You return to the Wall. There is no Night's Watch, you are alone, and yet you cannot feel alone. Wolf dreams come to you when you sleep, and  _she_  fills your vision when awake. You think it is enough to know she fights for you as you fought for her. 

Men come, thieves, murderers, bastards, and then men, men who have committed no crime, more men than you could have imagined, a third son of a Lord, and then another, and you do not understand.

It doesn't feel like waiting, it stops feeling like exile. It's life, an opportunity. You pick the best man, a son of a laborer who likes books a little too much and work not quite enough. A boy who tried to steal knowledge even though he couldn't read. He has a grin and angry eyes. He is your steward a week after his arrival, only a few month after yours.

Smart and angry, not the best combination, but the necessary one. He'll never be a great swordsman, but you can see how the men look at him. He could be a man they would follow one day. You determine to make him that man even though it is late nights teaching him letters and sounds and neither of you is patient enough for this.

Supplies come with the men. Bran sends a Maester. A raven comes from Arya. You are busy, busier than you ever have been, busy doing, busy waiting. You think you've kept track, months, a year, two, a third one, time goes and comes and goes again, losing its meaning to you.

You have held paradise in your arms, and she will claim you again. 

Bitterness cannot remain with you, not when men are asking for your advice, seeking your counsel, and then you know.  You saved them, and they do not forget. The North remembers. They come for you. Who knew what other terrors lived in the real North, what else would come to the Wall, perhaps worse, perhaps nothing, all you know is that the childish version of the Night's Watch you had discovered was a lie is forming before your eyes.

They look at you like a hero of old and you cannot bear it. You love it too much. There is only one thing that you love more.

\----

Spring comes to the gates with her. Blue eyes, red hair, grey dress. She is the summer sky, the Weirwood leaves, the color of Winterfell on a cloudy day. Life rides into Castle Black on a white horse, and then the Queen in the North is in your arms, and you can't breathe.

She is crying, and happy, and saying something that you can't quite believe because you so desperately want it to be true. 

"I keep my promises too."

 

**Author's Note:**

> I was horribly disappointed in the last season of GoT and particularly in that finale. What they did to Jon broke my heart, so I'm struggling to get back to my Jonsa happy place, but writing this made me feel better. Thanks for reading!


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